Modern Numismatics

Louis Golino

Louis Golino has been a collector of American and world coins since childhood and has written about coins since 2009. In addition to writing about modern coins and other numismatic issues for Coin World, he writes a monthly column for The Numismatist magazine and has written for other coin publications. In 2017, for “Liberty Centennial Designs,” in Elemetal Direct, he was presented with the Numismatic Literary Guild's award for best article in a non-numismatic publication. He is also a founding member of the Modern Coin Forum.

New Coins: Shooting Thaler and Southern Lights

This week I’d like to highlight two coins from world mints in
different parts of the planet that caught my attention.

First is the 2017 Shooting Thaler 50 Francs silver
coin from Switzerland, which has a mintage of 1,200 coins and is
also issued in gold. This year’s piece honors the annual shooting
festival held in the Swiss canton of Glarus. As with previous
issues, the design includes both a representation of Helvetia, the
Swiss version of Liberty, and someone holding a rifle.

Shooting Thalers are “are commemorative coins issued
by the 26 cantons, or member states, of Switzerland. They pay
tribute to the shooting festivals or “Schützenfest,” that take place
regularly in Switzerland. These Shooting Thalers are very popular
with world coin collectors and are well-known for their beautiful
and intricate designs depicting of marksmanship, heraldry,
patriotism, and various cantonal themes,” as I said in an overview of these coins I did for Modern Coin
Mart last year.

The shooting festivals commemorated on these coins
are today the largest rifle shooting events in the world, drawing
some 200,000 to 300,000 people each year. Classic Shooting Thalers
were issued from 1842 to 1939, and then the program was revived in
1984 due largely to the efforts of an American coin dealer.

These coins are not surprisingly especially popular
in Switzerland and in Europe, and relatively few pieces typically
make it to the American market. Compared to a lot of other world
coins, this series has tended to appreciate in value, with some
issues doing better than others.

I have not seen the 2017 issue available yet from an
U.S. dealer, but with time I anticipate the coins will be available
from Modern Coin Mart, Talisman Coins, and possibly others

I was able to purchase one from German dealer Tobias Honscha
for a competitive price this week.

Southern Lights

The second coin is from the New Zealand Post (a division of the country’s
post office that sells coins).

The coin is the 2017 Southern Lights $1 silver proof
coin that uses a hologram to replicate the cosmic light show of the
Southern Lights, which though less well known than the Northern
Lights, is apparently very impressive.

The coin uses what the mint calls “a unique
holographic foiling technique” to provide the viewer with a glimpse
of the dazzling light show as it dances across the Mackenzie Basin.

Only 1,500 of this issue are being produced, and
given the popularity of last year’s Royal Canadian Mint coin that
showed the Northern Lights on a two-ounce silver coin that glows in
the dark, whose value has risen impressively, I expect the this coin
to be popular too.

The reverse, designed by Johnathan Gray of the New
Zealand Post, shows the Church of the Good Shepard with the
shimmering light show above it. The official description adds:
“This stunning coin captures the magic of the Southern Lights both
in its color and its shimmering surface. The Southern Lights can
range in color from pink to green to purple, with the colors
dependent on a number of factors. The type of solar wind particle,
the type of gas molecule and the electrical state at the time of the
collision all have an effect on the eventual color of the aurora.”

This coin can also be purchased from Italian
dealer Powercoin from the same German dealer (Tobias
Honscha), and on eBay. Others will likely have it as well, and the
coin is supposed to ship in February.

This entry was posted on Fri Jan 27 13:43:15 EST 2017. You can follow any responses to this entry through the Atom feed.